In order to make free will decisions on interactions, VP requires information of such interactions to be made available to it. The phenomenon of consciousness is designed by the evolutionary process to supply such information to VP on an ongoing basis in an optimized manner, in which only interactions (or parts of interactions) that require judgmental power (i.e. that require decision making) are sent to VP (and thus enter consciousness) filtering out those that are genetically programmed, repetitive, condition based repetitive and those requiring random decisions.

If there were no free will, there was no requirement of consciousness.

The phenomenon of pain is designed by the evolutionary process for the only reason that free will exists.

In detail: As VP (i.e. the self) is a free agent, it has the freedom to consider the contents of perceived interaction or ignore it. To defeat possibilities of ignorance offered by acausal freedom (under title Compelling the Free Agent) in the cases of damage in the body, the survival aspect of the evolutionary process has designed the mechanism of pain, which not only alerts VP on a continuous basis, but compels it to intramurally process the damaged area in the IPS to resolve it (in detail).

As they play vital role in the free will decision making process, it is important to understand mechanisms underlying phenomena like awareness, consciousness, decision making, conscious & unconscious thought processes & actions, etc. It is also not possible to debate about responsibility without understanding what the "self" is.

As the claim made by the DOS model is based on a causal mechanism (agent-causation) which not only coherently works with mechanisms mentioned above, but also mechanisms underlying phenomena like sensations, perceptions, attention, pain, instincts, empathizing, multitasking, heredity, attention limit, hunger, etc., it is the strongest ever objective proof of the existence of free will.